Letters

Inanity

I was amused by the reply of Paul Flewers to my review of Phil Cohen’s Children of the revolution (Letters, May 21). There appears to be some confusion on his part as to my reasoning for ‘having a go’ at the Trotskyite journal Revolutionary History. As far asI amconcerned, anythingpublished by the communist movement is fair game for the application of critical, dialectical thought. Does the editorial board of Revolutionary History consider itself exempt from this? One would hope not.

The remainder of Paul’s contribution is most disappointing, consisting as it does of attempts to paint me into the ‘revisionist’ camp of CPGB historiography. In fact the piece in question was initially animated by a concern to overcome the instrument-alism of both Trotskyite and revisionist interpretations. Extricating the British Party from a complex web of international alignments, alongside the denial of the local dynamism which similarly activated the CPGB, merely represents the abstracted flip-sides of the same, dialectical, coin.

Paul eschews the charge of ‘Trotskyist orthodoxy’, interpreting this as a caricature whereby the CPGB obeyed Moscow “to the last dot and comma”. This misses the point of my critique, concerned as it was to scrutinise the manner in which Bruce Robinson organised material based on the CPGB’s ‘autonomy’ from the USSR around a schematic, Trotskyite pole. Flewers appears to be similarly addicted to this methodological inanity, casually remarking that “the peculiarities of the CPGB during the Stalin era were merely matters of interpretation of the line sent down from Moscow”. Excuse me for being picky here, but what exactly is meant by “interpretation”?

One could argue that the practice of Pollitt, Campbell and Horner during the ‘third period’ remoulded the Comintern line in favour of participation inside the so-called ‘social-fascist’ trade unions, with Pollitt and Campbell in particular being adept at squaring this with the ideological needs of the ‘third period’. Judging from the published arguments of Flewers and Robinson, they wish to submerge such “interpretation” into the more traditional instrumentalist narrative of subordination. Therefore Robinson can blandly suggest that “the ‘relative autonomy’ of which so much has been made was … of limited importance, or non-existent” (Revolutionary History Vol 6, No2-3, p260).

As for Paul’s parting shot concerning Arthur Horner, the point is not whether functionaries like Dutt and Pollitt would have launched a public ‘Free Arthur’ campaign if Horner had been imprisoned inside the Soviet Union (of course, this would be unlikely - although dear old Harry may have had a few private qualms). I was simply arguing that even Stalin would have some reservations about liquidating one of the CPGB’s leading trade unionists, particularly in the era of popular frontism. Admitting this is confessing the British Party’s ability to produce and sustain a clutch of organic proletarian leaders - something that Flewers simply cannot do.

Phil Watson
Liverpool

Lost marbles

Who the hell is GA Shanks, and why do you print his letters? The one in the Weekly Worker May 28 takes some beating. I never expected to read such a mishmash of anti-Marxist drivel in the pages of your paper.

Doesn’t every Marxist understand that the spinelessness of the Russian bourgeoisie was determined not by genetic or cultural factors, but by economic ones? Marx had already explained the cowardice of the bourgeoisie as soon as it became clear that it contributed to the defeat of their own revolutions across Europe in 1848. He noted that, to the extent they fought the rotten aristocratic regimes of absolutism above them, they only roused the masses below them (principally their wage slaves) into a struggle against all property. In complete contrast to the Russian bourgeoisie (and notwithstanding crude ‘third worldist’ ideas of there being a labour aristocracy), the British working class has nothing to lose but its chains. Objectively, it has an interest (as indeed does all of humanity) in taking power. The fact it has not yet grasped this reality does not stop it being true.

Genuine Marxists (those who set themselves the task not just of interpreting the world, but of changing it), cannot merely assert this fact. In the words of Marx, some ideas (specifically, revolutionary socialist ideas) become a material force when, and only insofar as, they grip the masses. It is equally true that, to slightly paraphrase the Theses on Feuerbach, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. It will, in other words, require a British October to verify Leninism in this country. This is precisely why those who consciously oppose Leninism will have to be excluded from any communist rapprochement process - whether sponsored by the CPGB or anyone else. Why?

Ever since the strikingly different outcomes of the Russian Revolution and the many other revolutions which broke out at the end of World War I, it has been impossible to be a genuine Marxist without being, simultaneously, a Leninist. This was ABC for Leon Trotsky for the last two decades of his life, and has been a defining feature of Trotskyism ever since. A revision is, however, now taking place. Alan McCombes, Scottish Socialist Voice editor, has forgotten his ABCs. GA Shanks will, I guess, welcome the amnesia which is spreading like a contagion throughout SML. It is, however, an incontestable fact that the working class will never take power in the absence of a democratic centralist vanguard party built years in advance of the revolution, built through painstaking intervention in the day-to-day class struggle.

One fact which has not escaped the comrade’s notice (well done, GA) is that the working class in Britain today does not possess revolutionary class consciousness. But neither did the workers in Russia in the depth of the downturns in their class struggles. Nor indeed did they at the time they began the 1905 and the 1917 revolutions! Being an idealist rather than a Marxist, the comrade fails to grasp where this consciousness came from. It was only in the process of coming to terms with their own revolutionary practical activity that the workers achieved this consciousness.

Leninists, dialectical materialists - as distinct from Stalinists, mechanical materialists - appreciate that there was nothing automatic about this process. Had Lenin not built the Bolshevik Party in the 15 years prior to the 1917 revolution, this opportunity would have gone the way of the 1905 Great Dress Rehearsal. The reformist and centrist leaders of the Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries would have derailed this revolution, just as their counterparts went on to derail the German revolution the following year, and dozens of others this century. No matter how unpopular this fact is with the comrade, and regardless of how unpopular it becomes within the Scottish section of the CWI, nothing they say or do will alter the reality.

Incidentally, does the comrade believe his own rhetoric about the “truth being whatever the majority believes”? When he boasts about being an absolute relativist, does he understand what he is saying? Does he imagine, for instance, that when the majority held the world to be flat, it really was flat? Has the comrade lost all his marbles?

Given his bizarre identification of the British working class with the Russian bourgeoisie, perhaps he has.

Tom Delargy
Paisley

Brazilian repression

On May 20 a workers’ demonstration was savagely repressed in Brasilia. Over 20 people were injured and a teacher lost his sight. The attack was organised by the Cardoso ‘social democratic’ national government and by the Workers Party (PT) local government led by Cristóvam Buarque.

Cardoso is implementing a most reactionary programme against the workers and landless peasants in alliance with rightwing forces aligned with the former dictatorship. The PT, instead of defending the workers and peasants, is acting as a supporter of Cardoso’s offensive against many sections of the people. Immediately after this incident the Brazilian mass media launched a campaign against the far left. TV Globo and the daily newspapers O Globo, O Estado de Sao Paulo, Jornal do Brasil and Folha da Tarde are denouncing the PSTU (United Socialist Workers Party), the LBI (Internationalist Bolshevik League) and Causa Operaria. This propaganda offensive is attempting to prepare the ground for a witch hunt against all organisations that claim to defend Trotskyism against the PT’s rightwing evolution.

The Brazilian military police had a record of annihilation of the left during the military era, and today of killing hundreds of street children and of participating in the recent assassination of landless leaders in Para and other parts of Brazil. Now they are targeting the independent left.

We call on the international left and trade union movement to defend the Brazilian far left against repression.

John Stone
LCMRCI

Barbaric relic

Could you please explain to me what is meant by ‘democratic’ communism? So far as I have always understood my communist theory, democracy is a form of rule, a structural type of society for its administration. Democracy presumes a type of bureaucracy, whether it be capitalist or socialist. The former state machine must be smashed to liberate the forces of revolution so as to create working class democracy: ie, the dictatorship of the proletariat - yes, a dictatorship which, the stronger and more powerful it is, represents the highest expression of working class democracy.

My understanding of a communist system is where the state, including the democratic form, has withered away and with it all forms of class and external bureaucracy; where the people communally organise their own affairs in harmony and to the common good, through mutual discussion and voluntary agreement. Democracy would be a barbaric relic to such a community.

Tom Cowan
London